Quick P Update

In the excitement of actually doing a thing on a horse again, P has sort of been pushed to the back burner. Well, not sort of- he definitely has. There’s not much I can do with him other than bandage his stupid Foot Hole, then put him back in the round pen.

At this point I’m convinced he’ll be in there forever

After P lost his special shoe on the 19th and the vet did a re-check of the Foot Hole where she declared it to be healing nicely, AGF (Almighty Genius Farrier) came out on the 21st to reattach the shoe. Then on the 23rd, while I was in VA, I got a text from BO that P’s special shoe had slid a little, along with the following picture:

Worried this clip will get embedded

I didn’t want to pull the shoe because the vet was adamant that he needed it on so he wouldn’t do any (more) damage to his foot or the structures around it, but I also didn’t want the clip to break off additional hoof wall. But AGF responded and said that as long as the shoe is tight, which it is, that the clip would be fine and the hoof wall is too broken to do anything else to. So cross your fingers the damn shoe stays on until we re-check on April 17th.

Convo with BO. She gets me

Our bandaging routine for the last 4 weeks has consisted of me soaking a gauze pad in betadine, sugar and MSM, and stuffing it in the Foot Hole, then wrapping vet wrap and duct tape around it to keep it in there. The betadine keeps it disinfected and the sugar/MSM granules dry up the soft tissue. It’s been a daily part of my routine (yay for me), but in the past few days I’ve had an increasingly harder time getting the gauze pad in there, and then yesterday it just didn’t fit at all, despite me shaving it down to almost nothingness.

Because…

March 28th

Compared to:

March 4th

I stopped using Keratex on it last week, as I wasn’t sure if the hardening of the hoof wall was contributing to the cracking of it, so now he’s just on his regular Pro-Elite Senior feed/balancer/hay, along with Double Strength Farrier’s Formula, and then gets the WunderHoof rub on it daily. I’m almost out of the tub of Wunderhoof, as I’m quite generous with the stuff, and will definitely be ordering more. I don’t know if that’s what’s doing the trick, but I’m not stopping it to experiment!

So that’s about all there is to talk about on P. He’s sound trotting and cantering around the round pen, and walks fine even over gravel and rocks. He’s definitely itching to go back to work and stares like a total creeper at me the entire time I’m riding S in the arena (which is below the round pen).

When he is cleared to go back to work, which according to the vet, may very well be sooner than originally expected, I’m planning on sending him to training straight away. After the last 6 months of doctoring the horse, I’m ready for some time apart.